From the time WCW started Monday Nitro, airing head to head against WWF Raw, they offered some innovation to the wrestling business by airing live, showcasing Japanese and Mexican stars, and giving away the results of their competitor. However, some of the stories and characters were still cartoon-ish and reflected 1980’s sensibilities. Starting in the spring of 1996, WCW acquired two new stars, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall,

In the early 90’s Kevin Nash had a short stint in WCW as part of the Master Blasters tag team, under the name Steel. From their he had a silver haired wizard gimmick called OZ, and finally Vinnie Vegas. Scott Hall also had a stint in WCW around the same time under the name Diamond Studd. Neither were very successful in WCW, but both would go on to find success in the WWF. There Nash would wrestle under the name Diesel and become WWF champion, and Hall wrestled under the name Razor Ramon, a pseudo Scarface type character, and become Intercontinental champion. This was in a time when WWF was focusing on younger talent, and older established stars like Hogan and Macho Man had moved to WCW. However, Nitro eventually needed fresh young faces as well.

Eric Bischoff says “Nitro at the time was starting to get some traction. The numbers were growing, revenue was growing, the company was growing you know. We needed some fresh faces, so I contacted Scott hall and Kevin Nash.” (Monday Night Wars documentary episode 2)

Scott Hall was contacted first. WCW offered him a contract for around 1.2 million, for around 120 days of work. Hall says that you could make the same money in WWF, but there you’d work 300 days. Soon Nash was offered a contract as well, but was not eager to go back to WCW. “I had probably the worst three years of my life in WCW.” Nash recalls. “I was happy there and had no desire to leave. (MNW2)” In an attempt to negotiate he told Vince, “This is the offer they gave me….I want to stay, if you can match the offer I’ll stay.(NWO DVD)” Vince explained that if he matched that offer he’d have to do the same for his other big stars. Nash was still hesitant to leave. He explained to his wife that he felt like WWF was his family. His wife, who was six months pregnant at the time, patted herself on the stomach and said “This is your family.”

Scott Hall also left reluctantly. “I felt like I sold out. I wanted that guaranteed money to secure my kid’s future….not to excited about the prospects. (MNW2).” He also recalled some advice he got from a wrestling legend. “Chief Jay Strongbow told us years ago in this business you can make friends or you can make money, and I remember looking at Kev and like kid/xpac and going I’ve already got some friends, I’d like the money.” (NWO DVD)

In retrospect, WCW and Eric Bischoff get criticized for offering guaranteed contracts, but as Bischoff explains “WCW still did not have a great licensing and marketing business. In WWE (then WWF) someone like Nash or Hall could make considerable money from their cut of the licensing and merchandise.We didn’t have that, which was one reason we had to continue guaranteeing contracts.” (Biscoff, 209)

Hall and Nash both saw their WWF contracts end within six days of each other. Once Hall and Nash were on board, Bischoff planted the seed of what would become one of the hottest stories in the history of the business.

WCW continued their war with WWF Nitro in the early episodes of 1996. The January 8th episode hyped the upcoming Clash of the Champions wrestling event on TBS, Bischoff saying fans could watch it for free “Forget about the Royal Fumble,” referring to WWF’s upcoming January Pay Per View the Royal Rumble that Bischoff calls an “over priced PPV.” Clash of the Champions aired on January 23rd, the main event having the Giant and Ric Flair defeating Hogan and Savage. Also of note is Hogan’s entrance included his real life wife Linda, Woman (who formerly managed Ric Flair), Debra McMichael, two other women, and the WCW debut of Miss Elizabeth. This event had the only time WCW mentioned the WWF parody skits airing on Raw, and only back handedly. The WCW 900 number is plugged and one of the selling points is Mike Tenay interviewing Eric Bischoff about the WWF skits.

The taunting continued on 1/29 when Bischoff says “Forget about it Vince, get a job at a Pizza Parlor buddy.” Later former WWF women’s wrestler Madusa (known in WWF as Alundra Blayze) lost to Sherri Martel to which Bischoff says “Madusa should have stayed in the WWF she could have taken on 90% of the male athletes in that division.” Steve Mongo McMichaels adds “She’s a lot more of a man than Goldfarb I’ll tell you that,” referring to WWF star Golddust. Later Bischoff refers to Goldust as the “Rupal impersonator.”

A month later on February 26th Bischoff reffered to the “World Whining Federation.” “DQ Yokozuna in a handicapped match,‭ ‬Jake the Snake Roberts,‭ ‬you talk about picking up some bones here,‭ ‬over Isacc Yankem and Diesel over Bob Holly.‭ H‬e’s still around?”

A few months later on April 22 the broadcast opens with Bischoff “We are not like the world whining federation which a‭ ‬taped canned show,‭ ‬happened a couple weeks ago. Let me save you some time and put your remote control down.‭ T‬he‭ ‬Rupal impersonator, the transvestite Golddust defeats Savio, regains the intercontinental title YAWN‭ ‬Mankind‭ ‬defeats Auto Montoya,‭ ‬bigger yawn.‭ ‬And Vader defeats Batu Oh Boy”

A month before that one of the stranger WCW events occured with Uncensored 1996. The main event being a triple cage match between the Mega Powers, Hogan and Savage, vs the Alliance to End Hulkamania, which consisted Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Meng, The Barbarian, Lex Luger, The Taskmaster, Z-Gangsta and The Ultimate Solution, with the now heel Woman, Miss Elizabeth and Jimmy Hart. Z-Gansta was actor Tiny Lister, known among wrestling fans as villain Zeus from Hogan’s WWF produced No Holds Barred Movie. The character Zeus even had a few appearances and matches in the WWF. On the 3/18 episode of Nitro Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan introduced Z-Gangsta saying “Everybody in the world knows this man and what he did to you in the late‭ ‬80s.”

There was another extremely large wrestler in the ring. His real name was Robert Swenson. Taskmaster, in the ring on live TV, called him the Final Solution. The character was not affiliated with Nazis in anyway, but apparently WCW creative weren’t aware that the Final Solution was the name for the Hitler’s plan to kill all the Jews. By the time the Pay Per View aired the next Sunday, the name was changed to Ultimate Solution. It would be Swenson’s last pro wrestling match (he had a brief wrestling career in the late 80s). A year later he went on to play Bane in the Batman and Robin movie, considered by many fans to be the worst comic book movie ever, (he also had a small role in the aforementioned No Holds Barred movie). Swenson passed away in August of 97, and was perhaps the most unlucky guy in the history of pop culture.

Even without the unspeakably offensive name this match is still known as one of the dumbest things ever in wrestling. Hogan and Savage of course beat the eight other wrestlers, but it is somewhat note worthy that it was Hogan’s last major match before his infamous heel turn. He had a handful of appearances in subsequent Nitro’s, but by mid April he was off the air for a few months. The real life reason was he was filming a movie, Santa with Muscles. There was no in ring story to explain his absence, looking back, one would think they could have had a brutal defeat of Hogan at Uncensored to have an in ring story for his absence.

Of course Hogan would return to WCW at the July PPV Bash at the Beach, and his return would mark one of the greatest moments in professional wrestling history.

Goldberg is the one new superstar who rose to the top of WCW that was neither a former WWF star or an already established WCW star like Flair and Sting. This episode profiles his career.

Unfortunately it starts out with another recap of how Turner started WCW, and decided to put Nitro on head to head against WWF. At this point it’s officially annoying how the start of ever episode repeats all of this.

Once we get to Goldberg we see a few clips of him sacking people while playing college football for the University of Georgia. He played 3 seasons in the NFL and worked out at a gym owned by Sting and Lex Luger. He was given a try out at the WCW Power Plant and was soon moved onto TV.

WCW’s strategy in using Goldberg was to showcase his strengths and to hide his weaknesses. The design was to have quick matches with him demolishing people. They focused on his entrance with the security coming to the ring with him and the fireworks. Booker Kevin Sullivan didn’t have him talk at first.

The inevitable comparisons to Stone Cold Steve Austin are brought up, but like the Austin episode CM Punk dismisses that, saying Goldberg “evolved more organically” and that the two “couldn’t have been more different.” Stu Saks of Pro Wrestling Illustrated agrees.

The Miz calls his win streak into question, saying every week the number seemed significantly higher. Personally I’ve heard different accounts on the legitimacy of Goldberg’s streak. This is something I’ll have to look into more.

Goldberg’s match against Hogan on Nitro is discussed. Hogan had the championship belt, and made the call to lose to Goldberg on Nitro (Could this call into question claims that Hogan held down younger talent?). On Thursday Thunder the match was announced for the following Monday at the Georgia Dome where he played football. At this point Nitro’s 84 week streak of ratings wins over Raw was over, and WCW was feeling the pressure to stay on top. Giving this match for free on TV instead of a PPV is widely criticized in wrestling circles. The number changes throughout the episode, but WCW apparently filled the Georgia Dome with between 30,000 and 45,000 people with basically 3 days notice of the match.

Goldberg, the now WCW champion, became a mainstream star, making the TV guide cover and appearing at a NASCAR event. Through August of 98 Nitro’s ratings went back up, but Raw recovered by the end of the year. WWF’s Gillberg, a mockery of Goldberg, is also mentioned.

The Starrcade incident is covered, where Goldberg loses the title to Kevin Nash after Scott Hall zaps Goldberg with a taser. This led to the “Finger Poke of Doom” incident that is repeated throughout several episodes of this series, where on 1/4/99 Nash (in story) willingly drops the title to Hogan to reform the NWO. This has become known as one of the most unpopular moves WCW made, and is attributed to WCW’s downfall. Nash explains the plan with reforming the NWO was to put Goldberg in the title chase and have 8-9 guys to feed him and then eventually build to a rematch so Goldberg could get the title back. However, after this the crowd started turning on Goldberg, chanting Goldberg sucks and bringing signs like Fools Gold, Sold berg, and Goldberg=gutless. On 12/23/99 he punched through a limousine window and shredded the tendons in his right arm. He was out for five months. He came back on 5/29/2000, but by then it was too late. Raw more than doubled Nitro’s rating that night with a 6.4 to a 3.0. A year later, the Monday Night War would be over.

While the NWO era of the Monday Night Wars has been well documented, that storyline didn’t begin until around late spring of 1996. Not as much has been written about WCW and their Monday Nitro program in the pre-NWO era. This piece will provide coverage of that era, specifically from their debut until the end of 1995. During this period WCW utilized established WWF stars, as well as older WWF storylines, and, in retrospect, had some foreshadowing of the evil Hollywood Hulk Hogan character.

The major storyline in the opening days of Nitro was WCW champion Hulk Hogan, and his allies, the Hulkamaniacs, fueding with the Dungeon of Doom. Hogan’s allies were Macho Man Randy Savage, Sting, and Vader. Ironically Vader got fired shortly before the debut of Nitro after a real life locker room brawl with Paul Orndorf. Vader was actually seen in the opening vignette of the debut episode of Nitro.

The Dungeon of Doom was a group of villains led by Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan. As much as this era of WWF gets criticized for still relying on cartoonish gimmicks, the Dungeon of Doom could just as well been a villanous WWF stable. They had Kamala, Manshark (John Tenta/WWF’s Earthquake), the Zodiac (WWF’s Brutus Beefcake), and Meng (Haku in the WWF). Another member was the Giant, a 7 foot wrestler who prior to Nitro claimed to be the son of Andre the Giant, and, on the late Andre’s behalf, was seeking revenge against Hulk Hogan. The Giant did not appear on the first Nitro.

The debut of Monday Nitro, 9/4/95, was a few weeks away from their September Pay Per View Fall Brawl/Wargames/The Match Beyond, the main event of which was the Hulkamaniacs vs the Dungeon of Doom. Wargames was WCW’s answer to the Survivor Series. There were two rings side by side with a steel cage around both. There were two teams, and one member from each team would fight each other in the ring. After five minutes, another member from one team would enter, giving a two on one advantage, (which team got the advantage was determined in story line by a coin toss). Then every two minutes another wrestler would enter, until all team members were in. Once this happened, whichever team gained a pinfall or submission would win for their team.

Lex Luger made his shocking return to WCW on the debut of Nitro, and was granted a title shot against Hogan the next week. Hogan vs Luger was a big match at the time, and part of WCW’s philosophy was to show matches of that caliber on TV as opposed to PPV.

The announcers on the 9/11 episode of Nitro said that Luger ‭“‬Literally came out of the bush leagues to play with the big boys.‭”‬ During the match Hogan dropped the leg on Luger when the Dungeon of Doom stormed the ring. At this point, Luger joined the Hulkamaniacs at the urging of his real life friend Sting, as the announcers stated that Vader was no longer with the company hence Hogan was a man short for Wargames. Macho Man in story was more apprehensive about Luger joining.

At the Wargames match, the Dungeon of Doom had the two on one advantage (as the heel or villain team usually did in these matches). The Hulkamaniacs were dressed in camaflogue/military gear. Hogan came out and some kind of white dust in the Doom member’s eyes. The Hulkamaniacs won, which meant that Hogan was allowed five minutes in the ring with Kevin Sullivan. After knocking him around a bit, the Giant came into the ring, got behind Hogan, and twisted his neck. This is arguably similar to the 1988 Saturday Nights Main Event episode where after defeating King Kong Bundy, Andre came behind Hogan and choked him out.
This led up to a Halloween Havoc match in October between Hogan and the Giant. In the build up to the PPV Hogan’s character was deconstructed, in a strange foreshadowing of Hollywood Hogan. On the 10/2/95 episode of Nitro, Kevin Sullivan, disguised as an old woman in the crowd, attacked Hogan, leading to the Zodiac shaving off Hogan’s mustache. The next week, Mean Gene interviewed Hogan who came out wearing black and black neck brace. The following week Hogan cuts a pre-recorded promo with a new black and grey background. Here he talks about the dark side of Hulk Hogan, how there is evil inside him. He also talks about how he once worked with a promoter who’s ego got out of control. He then took his Hulkamaniacs to WCW and “As we speak, that promoter is dying, and choking on his own ego.” He goes onto say how Hulkamania is more powerful than wrestling promotions.

Halloween Havoc had a sumo monster truck challenge that took place on top of the events arena where both the Giant and Hogan had monster trucks and tried to push each other out of a giant circle. Hogan’s truck was apparently made by the crew of the Bigfoot monster truck. Hogan won and after wards the two brawled and the Gaint seemingly fell off the building.

Later that night Hogan was in the ring, still dressed in black with a black design painted on his face. They were selling the idea that the Giant was gone. Sure enough, the Giant showed up. The match went on, and after a ref bump this other giant wrestler wrapped up like a mummy came to the ring. This was the Yeti, who debuted at the very end of Nitro seemingly bursting out of a glacier. In one of the more bizarre moments in wrestling history, Hogan was crushed between the two giants as it looked like the Yeti was dry humping him from behind. The match ended in a disqualification, but on Nitro it was revealed that Hogan’s manager, Jimmy Hart, arranged for the title to change hands if there was a DQ. Hart turned on Hogan and arranged for the Giant to win the title. However, due to the bizarre circumstances of the match, the title was declared vacant, and it would be up for grabs at the next World War Three Pay Per view.

Where Wargames was WCW’s answer to the Survivor Series, WW3 was there attempt to outdo the Royal Rumble. This match had three rings with 20 men in each ring. Each ring had their own battle royal, and when there were 20 men left between the three rings, they would gather in one ring and resume. The winner of that battle royal wins the World War 3 match, and on this inagural PPV would win the title. The match was naturally chaotic, hard to follow, not offering much in the way of spots. The TV screen was split into three segments for the audience back home to attempt to follow the action. Wrestlers seemingly exited and entered the ring at will, as you had to be thrown over the top rope to be eliminated.

On the PPV, before the WW3 match, Hogan cuts a promo where he goes back to the red and yellow. He burns the black outfit over which he had his traditional red and yellow outfit. Then cuts a promo on dirt-sheets/the various fan written newsletters that report on backstage gossip pertaining to wrestling such as the Wrestling Observer. “Observe this brother!” Hogan called the dirt-sheets out for saying the Giant would win the WW3 match and saying Macho Man’s arm was legitimately hurt. “This is like a dinosaur compared to the internet brother! The internet’s got the scoops!”

The winner of the WW3 match was Macho Man, who less than ten years prior won the vacated WWF title at a tournament at Wrestlemania IV. That title was vacated after a bizarre finish to the Hogan Andre rematch on Saturday Night’s Main Event (which followed Andre choking Hogan on the aforementioned Bundy match).

The last PPV of the year was Starrcade, and event which actually pre-dated Wrestlemania. The main event had Savage defend the title against Ric Flair, who that same night won a triangle match against Sting and Luger for #1 spot. The show ended with Flair winning the title. Oddly Hogan was not on this PPV (neither was the Giant). Given Starrcade was WCW’s equivalent of Wrestlemania it is a mystery why the first Starrcade of the Monday Night Wars didn’t feature wrestling biggest star, even if he was starting to get booed. Never mind why a Hogan/Giant match wasn’t saved until then.

The Attitude Era is considered by many fans to be the WWF’s greatest era, featuring the height of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s popularity, along with the Rock, Mankind, and DX.

This episode opens with the more cartoon-ish gimmicks of the pre-Attitude WWF, such as the Sultan, Steve Austin’s Ring Master gimmick, and Ron Simmons in that goofy looking helmet.

Eric Bischoff was riding high with Monday Nitro and the NWO story line. At the time he believed WWF would never recover. Someone warned him that WWF was about to try Howard Stern/Shock Jock type programming, but he dismissed that thinking it would never work.

The Austin/Pillman gun incident is covered, where they filmed a segment at Brian Pillman’s home during which he fired a gun at Austin. Hugely controversial at the time, Vince apologized on air the next week. However, announcer Jim Ross said they got a 75% positive response from their audience to that segment.

Sports journalist Bill Apter is interviewed for this documentary. He supplies a few quotes as it is explained that from here the WWF roster became more edgy. Acts like the black militant group the Nation of Domination formed, as well as De-generation X.

Vince McMahon’s opening speech on the 12/15/97 edition of Raw is shown, where he explains how his programming will now be more contemporary, and away from the older formula of good guys vs bad guys.

By January of 1998 Raw was still losing the ratings battle to Nitro but was on the rise with its new edgier gimmicks like Val Venis (basically a porn star), sexual chocolate Mark Henry, Mr. Ass (Billy Gunn), and the pimp character the Godfather.

Meanwhile, Eric Bischoff still wasn’t impressed. Jericho says that Bischoff was telling people in six months McMahon will lose his TV sponsors and go out of business. Meanwhile Sable (who is not interviewed here) is shown on TV guide, and Nash says that she beat any segment Nitro had at that point.

Just as WWF was embracing the Attitude Era, the corporate structure of Turner Broadcasting was becoming more restrictive on WCW. Standards and Practice representatives were in the WCW creative rooms while porn star Jenna Jameson did a segment with Val Venis on Raw, and WWF introduced their hardcore title.

WCW embarrassingly tried to compete with the Attitude Era while wearing the Standards and Practices handcuffs. They tried their own hardcore title, and we see that clip where Terry Funk almost legitimately almost got kicked in the head by a horse. We also see the infamous junkyard invitational, the viagra on a pole match, and Judy Bagwell on a forklift match. WCW Stunt Coordinator Ellis Edwards is interviewed here and says “I would tell them the things I would do in the stunt business and they would write it into the storyline.” This is the one part of the episode I would have liked to have seen more elaborated. I would have like to have seen who thought of trying to have a WCW Hardcore title and how they balanced that with standards and practices, etc.

This episode layed out the interesting parallels of the shifting creative direction of WWF that mirrored the more restrictive environment of WCW, but I would have like to have seen more of the struggles that came with the latter.

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I write as a hobby, and am self publishing comic books, prose, and poetry which are available on my Hard Coal Studios website. My works include Classic Horror Comics, Frankenstein: The Illuminatus Complex, and a poetry collection entitled Almost Normal.